After years of design work by me, and months of programming by Mary Jo Graça, I am pleased to present here as a Beta-1 the first complete version of the Cahill-Keyes Multi-scale Megamap at the virtual and actual scale of 1/1,000,000, or smaller as preferred. Virtual, because the whole 40 MB file is on a thumb drive as well as downloadable from my website; actual, because if you have the material and space for it, you can print and assemble the map as a gym-size showpiece, 40 m x 20 m (132' x 66'). Or various other scales from large wall maps to smaller notebook size versions.

This Beta-1 Cahill-Keyes Multi-scale Megamap is still at a very early stage, full of deficiencies itemized further on, but comprising six major firsts, unprecedented in any other world map:

1) First-time-ever digital draft of an entiresingle-frame world map at 1/1,000,000, with

5) scalability from 1/1,000,000 down to 1/200,000,000 or beyond,all with one-degree geocells; and

ergo

6) a unitary world map whereby all complete or partial segments,at any size, are scaled replicas of the same parent Megamap, and

two additional firsts for the Cahill-Keyes Megamap endeavor:

(as in conventional world maps):

7) complete coastlines, and

8) complete international borders.

On the minus side, the Beta-1 as of now has at least seven shortcomings, what with its early stage, and our limited resources. [I'm still amazed that we did all this graphic work via the free OpenOffice.org (OOo) 2.0 Draw, on a pair of $300 Asus netbooks with a 4 gig drive and a 7" screen — Mary Jo's, that is; I attached a 19" monitor to mine. Also, as to be explained later, we upgraded to OOo 3.0 on a $448 Acer notebook at the last minute.]

Negatives: these are all to be dealt with in later Betas:

1) Outdated borders(World Vector Shoreline from NOAA: perhaps to be supplanted by GMT /GSHHS or other GIS data sets later on.)

2) No major internal boundaries (large provinces and states);

3) No major rivers, lakes, or inland seas;

4) No light-blue fill-color for oceans;

5) No numbering, yet, of five-degree meridians and parallels;

6) No re-assembly, yet, of four Antarctica segments,plus extensions for Iceland, Greenland, and Kamchatka peninsula);

7) Adequate but inefficient sizing and panning mechanismto view or extract any selected area of the full-size Megamap,or its smaller counterparts.

Names, and all other features, are TBA. My aim has always been to produce, as a first step, a simple outline map, with coastlines and national borders, at 1/1,000,000 and smaller. A “simple” outline map — but likewise with high precision and high resolution, global totality and fidelity, and those all-important one-degree proportional geocells. For now, this utilizes vector, or line drawn coasts and borders, rather than a geophysical or remote image composite. I hope others can add those in the future, and much else to this basic skeleton.

Questions or comments: here, or gene.keyes at gmail dot com

Note: as explained on the Web page, pdf prints of this and other images there are sharp and accurate, unlike jpegs; also, pdf's load and scroll amazingly faster in the Chrome browser than anything else I've seen, including Acrobat.

You mentionned to Hans...the Beta-1 uses the WVS data set all the way from 1/1M on down...

Therefore and from what I saw there is NO generalization from one scale set to another.IMO I believe this is a must.

Please keep Cartotalk posted on your progress.

Regards,

Indeed, no generalization in the Beta-1; perhaps that can be done as later versions evolve. Meanwhile, I was surprised at how well it worked at smaller scales, notwithstanding lack of generalization. One exception was the Aaland Islands off of Finland, which become a black blob. And southern Chile is not so good. Etc. --Gene Keyes

Progress report: Todd Ulrich has done a test print on vinyl of a 5' x 1o' [jr.] Megamap version, 1/13,000,000: among the biggest single-piece world maps in existence, and the only such one printed with a resolution of one-degree geocells. Joe Roubal has made an 18" globe to my specifications, with a 5-degree graticule, in 8 octants corresponding to the Cahill-Keyes map. While both of these trial specimens are not yet ready for prime time, they a great step ahead of my earlier hand-drawn prototypes. I have posted a set of 10 photos of the globe and maps here http://www.genekeyes...test-print.htmlAs I conclude on that web-page,

A basic principle of the Cahill-Keyes map system is total point for point comparability of map and globe: octant for octant, geocell for geocell, shape for shape. No other world map or globe does this.

Another progress report: Just a heads-up that the Cahill-Keyes Multi-scale Megamap Beta-2 will be appearing on my web site in due course, and with detailed documentation about its augmented Perl and OOo programming. Meanwhile, attached is a preview jpeg of ca. 1/100,000,000.

3) Major lakes and seas added, plus up-to-date national borders, both thanks to Duncan Webb, who is also preparing a Cahill-Keyes World Political wall map, in color, labeled with countries and capitals.